Special Collections

National Book Award Winners - Young People's Literature

Description: The National Book Awards are presented annually "to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of good writing in America." Here we present the medal winners for Young People's Literature.

Winner of the 2014 National Book Award for Young People's Literature and a Newbery Honor Book. Jacqueline Woodson, one of today's finest writers, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse.

'Kouun is "good luck" in Japanese, and one year my family had none of it.' Just when Summer thinks nothing else can possibly go wrong, an emergency whisks her parents away to Japan, right before harvest season.

A boy joins a theatrical troupe of goblins to find his missing brother.In the town of Zombay, there is a witch named Graba who has clockwork chicken legs and moves her house around--much like the fairy tale figure of Baba Yaga.

In Caitlin's world, everything is black or white. Things are good or bad. Anything in between is confusing. That's the stuff Caitlin's older brother, Devon, has always explained. But now Devon's dead and Dad is no help at all.

Various diaries, letters, and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, from birth to age sixteen, as he is brought up as part of a science experiment in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War.

"Why mess around with Catholicism when you can have your own customized religion?" Fed up with his parents' boring old religion, agnostic-going-on-atheist Jason Bock invents a new god -- the town's water tower.

Leaving Home...forever. Like many girls her age in India, thirteen-year-old Koly is getting married. When she discovers that the husband her parents have chosen for her is sickly boy with wicked parents, Koly wishes she could flee.

Miracle McCloy has always known that there is something different about her: She was pulled from the womb of a dead woman--a "miracle" birth--and Gigi, her clairvoyant grandmother, expects Miracle to be a prodigy, much like Dane, the girl's brooding

Perico, or parrot, was what Dad called me sometimes. It was from a Mexican saying about a parrot that complains how hot it is in the shade, while all along he's sitting inside an oven and doesn't know it. . . .

A boy fleeing from criminal charges falls in with a charlatan, his dwarf attendant, and an urchin girl, travels with them about the kingdom of Westmark, and ultimately arrives at the palace where the king is grieving over the loss of his daughter.